SHIPPING AND LOGISTICS

The current article is practice-oriented and is intended for shipowners and sea carriers as well as for practitioners and students who wish to revise or expand their knowledge on this specific area of the carriage of goods by sea. The paper provides the reader with a thorough understanding of the main instrument regulating the carriage of dangerous cargo – the IMDG Code. Further, Section II of the paper addresses also the carriage of solid bulk cargo (the IMSBC Code) and the most frequent problems and hazards which are associated with the transportation of such cargo. In general, the paper analyses the process of carriage of hazardous cargo from the perspective of the carrier, and, thus, it may be used as a guide to the carriage of dangerous goods.

A newly-prosperous middle class was beginning to emerge at the dawn of the Age of Exploration. Mercantile political and economic theories notwithstanding, it was the importation of goods, rather than exports, that was important. The Age of Exploration was not about military or imperial expansionism. It was about trade.

The great trading companies of this period were granted monopolies by European monarchs and roamed the seas to Africa and Asia. These firms had fleets of privately-owned ships. The trading companies’ representatives, the ship officers, and crew all relied upon the mail for communications back to the home countries. This paper views the birth of international trade through the lens of postal history.

The SCOPIC clause (Special Compensation P&I Club Clause) provides an alternative remuneration to salvors, which is computed differently to the awards provided in Article 13 and Article 14 of the International Convention on Salvage (1989). In essence, SCOPIC provides agreed tariff rates under the form of a remuneration as an indemnity for the salvage services performed and the salvor’s investments in the operation. The award afforded by SCOPIC, although being a modification of the Article 14 Special Compensation, is based on different principles than those underlying the respective provision of the Convention. The major aim of the current paper is to give a comprehensive explanation of the clause and its features. It will also clarify the development and the operation of the SCOPIC clause and will underline the advantages which it provides to the area of marine salvage. To understand the essence of the SCOPIC clause, one has to be familiar also with the awards available under Articles 13 and 14, and, therefore, a comparison between the three will be made. Thus, it will be illustrated that, depending on the award chosen, there could be a different outcome for all the parties involved in the salvage operation.

Integration of reverse logistics processes into supply chain network design can help to achieve a network that incorporates environmental factors as well as economic factors. In this study, a new integrated approach is proposed to address designing a multi-product, multi-period supply chain network with reverse logistics. The framework of the proposed approach includes green supplier evaluation and a mathematical model in an uncertain environment. To the best of our knowledge, integration of green supplier evaluation into the designing supply chain network with reverse logistics has not been considered in the literature. This integration can help to incorporate experts’ opinions about environmental impact of suppliers in the network design. Minimization of total cost and maximization of total greenness score of purchased raw materials/components are two objectives of the model. The fuzzy EDAS method is used to determine the greenness scores of suppliers. Also, demand of customers and capacity of suppliers are defined using fuzzy numbers and a fuzzy method is used to obtain trade-off solutions. The proposed approach is applied to designing the supply chain network of a home appliance company. The results show that the proposed approach is feasible and efficient to obtain solutions to design the supply chain network.

The motivation behind this assignment is to illustrate the significance of the different types of risks that a ship-owner company faces. More specifically, we will examine the tanker segment of interest. The relationship between the shipping trade and the oil markets is bidirectional. That means that oil markets would not exist without ships to transfer the oil and conversely ship-owners would not have the opportunity to maximize their profits through tanker markets without the oil markets’ presence. Different types of risk arise in two periods, the short-run and the long-run. Hence, constructive and efficient risk management must be applied in order to avoid negative and disastrous for the shipping companies consequences. The analysis will be supported with empirical statistical data and market reports from Clarkson’s Shipping Intelligence and Lloyd’s List as also online reports from the webpage of many International Organizations like OPEC, OECD, and IEA. The Greek shipping Company that will be used as a benchmark in this assignment is the Tsakos Energy Navigation Limited, a provider of Crude Oil transportation services and operates a fleet of 54 new built crude oil vessels.

“Strategic management consists of the analysis, decisions, and actions an organization undertakes in order to create and sustain competitive advantages” (Dess et al., 2005).  “A liner service is a fleet of ships, with a common ownership or management, which provide a fixed service, at regular intervals, between named ports, and offer transport to any goods in the catchment area served by those ports” (Fayle, 1933, Gardner, 1997). Based on the aforementioned definitions, shipping organizations in the liner shipping industry, often come to an agreement to pool their activities in order to limit their risks. The aim of this assignment is to define the main pathologies that Strategic Alliances cure, along with an analysis of the crucial factors that influence the strategic decision making of the shipping companies which are members of those Alliances. Finally, an investigation upon past and current market competitiveness and structure will help us study the link between internalization and strategic management theories.

This study examines the concept of transparency as practiced (or not) in ports. It explores the availability of information to the general public and port stakeholders through the ports’ most public face—its website, studying public ports in North America, Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean. This exploratory research centred on identifying the parameters that would be useful for the general public to have sufficient information to monitor, review and in many cases, participate in the decision-making processes carried out by the port authority, irrespective of whether or not laws mandate such disclosure. Fifty-one items were identified for the examination of each port’s website, focusing primarily on four major categories: decision-making governance, port communications and accessibility, transparency in reporting and in port operational activities. Using nine items as proxies for the 51, the research reveals uneven levels of port transparency both regionally and by governance model. The study reveals a need for increasing and differentiating the existing levels and standards of transparency in the governance of the port industry, and for greater consistency between ports within and across regions. The study concludes with a research agenda for future research.

At every financial period CFOs are requested by shareholders to present the financial results not only just as formal financial statements but also as useful information in relation to their competitors or the market. Despite the best services provided, it is due to the existing trade cycles [1] of the shipping market that shipping companies have trouble delivering strong long-term growth unless their management ensures that all business aspects operate efficiently and effectively. Efficiency can either be expressed through an operating ratio or through a simple percentage of budgets versus a specific time frame. As much as effectiveness is concerned and according to up today literature, management effectiveness ratios compare the financial statements measures to evaluate management performance. What has been described is industry’s standard, however measurement of the management force to vessel’s operation should be evaluated also for industry’s most feasible Holistically Operating...